If you follow this blog for a while, you must know how much I like Microsoft OneNote for Windows. I consider it a very helpful tool for brainstorming and notetaking, and being a to-do list addict, I decided to give it a go and try to keep my work to-dos in it, using its built-in tag system.
Well, I don’t know if I did something wrong and broke the thing, but it seems that OneNote is not suitable for keeping tracks of to-dos.
Why?
I created a list of notes and added a tag of “To-do” (keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-1) to each of them. Then I added a bunch of custom tags, added some more todos, added my custom tags to them. So far so good.
I decided to give the “Tag Summary” page a go, and I saw in satisfaction that I could see all my to-dos from all my notebooks grouped by tag name, conveniently shown there. I thought wow, that’s cool.
Then I marked one of the to-dos (simple to-dos, not my custom tagged notes) as done. Refreshed the tag summary, and tada! All my to-dos are gone. What the f?
Is it how it’s supposed to work? Marking a single to-do as done marks the whole group? What’s happening here, can anyone enlighten me?
10 comments on this post
kmitchell #1
23.Jan.08
hey, i want this magical OneNote thing too!
it seems to be the only way to have my 3 A4 long list of 2dos be done:(
no solution to that or to the bug either from me:P
Sugar #2
23.Jan.08
@kmitchell: Ha! And I still haven’t added my “Discuss with Katkat” todo list when I took those screenshots!
kmitchell #3
23.Jan.08
@sug: pff…i’m innocent! i never EVER add bullets to other people’s 2do lists, ask anyone! i just fwd some bugs/requests, which are then added to your 2dos so that i will have the pleasure to mark some of my 2dos as “done”. simple as that!
KCorax #4
23.Jan.08
Add a link to one of the Onenote blogs at Microsoft, so that it will show up as a trackback. They tend to respond to this stuff.
KCorax #5
23.Jan.08
Let’s try to summon a demon of the Redmond variety.
Sugar #6
23.Jan.08
@KCorax: Thanks, I never wrote it down and it got lost among my uber-important tasks.
Chris Pratley (MS) #7
23.Jan.08
Demon arrived. Err, a little delayed. Sugar, that’s definitely not expected behavior. I can’t reproduce it myself. Did you do anything special to those items? Can you reproduce this problem over and over? In different notebooks? feel free to send me mail at chrispr(at) microsoft.com. Send me a note section that shows this behavior if you can repro it. That will help a ton. Cheers!
Charlie #8
23.Jan.08
I know this is an old thread but I just came upon it because I am also researching this problem. I have found that when I first bring up the Tag Summary with “Show only unchecked items” checked I do not see all my to do items. When I un-check “Show only unchecked items” and then recheck it they all come back. Looks like a bug to me.
Sugar #9
23.Jan.08
@Charlie
I understand what you’re saying, but for the life of me, I cannot reproduce the bug. Weird.
Maybe it was resolved with some Office update? I do not know.
Chuck #10
23.Jan.08
The problem lies in the fact that some OneNote tags are ‘checkable’ (like any of the checkbox-type icons), and some are not (i.e. ‘Phone Number’, ‘Web Site to Visit’, etc.)
I’m not sure how to distinguish the checkable from the uncheckable ones, nor if it’s possible to do ‘Custom’ tage — for instance I’d like my @Home (checkable) tag to have a little ‘H’ on it so I can distinguish it from my @Work, @Out, @SomeOtherRandomContext.. But it would be great if I could tag something as ‘Call Back’ or ‘Send EMail’ and be able to mark it as Complete somehow.. I could add multiple tags like combining the @Computer tag with the SendEmail tag, but then that still makes the Tag Summary not as useable as I’d like..